The Sunday before last I threw my well-loved but aging Sony Ericsson cell off my deck. That was Super Bowl Sunday, so I leave you to fill in the rest of the details concerning my motivation. (Needless to say if you were the lucky finder, uhm, free phone.)

The T616′s spectacular exit wasn’t completely unexpected or undeserved however, as it had taken to rebooting spontaneously mid-conversation and mysteriously would drop individual button functionality randomly, obviously out of pure spite. “You’d like to check your voice mail eh?” the Sony would taunt me, “remove my battery and reboot me three times, then we’ll see if I’ll let you get your precious messages, moo HA HA HA.” Clearly the phone had gone bad, and with our relationship deteriorating I don’t feel too wrong about giving it one final ‘long distance connection.’

I’ve been shopping for phones for a few months now, and have mostly been completely underwhelmed. The entire industry (or at least U.S. incarnations of such) seems to be lagging badly in mobile development. Perhaps consumer techno-demand just isn’t as fervent here as it is in Korea, Japan, and Europe, but look at my situation: Two and a half years ago I bought the T616, which was a pretty hot phone for its time. It had a full OS, simple browsing capability, a camera, POP access. At that point I was assuming that for my next phone I’d have a plethora of superior options, all located on next-gen high speed networks. The networks are here—kind of, but the phones are not. I don’t want a full on Treo or anything nearly that bulky, and anything less than that doesn’t have much of a suite of features superior to my 2 and a half year old phone. Already I’m disappointed even before making a purchase—I’m so jaded I get buyer’s remorse even before whipping out the credit card.

Motorola SLVR Review (MOTO-SLVR-REVW)

Enter Cingular’s SLVR (pronounced “sliver”), the follow-up to the ubiquitous RAZR (Motorola apparently despises excessive vowels), which is slightly slimmer, but in my beloved candy-bar form factor. Laser etched keypad with a copper sheen, sleek black case with brushed aluminum highlights—this phone makes all others ugly.

Also of note is the ever-so-controversial iTunes integration. Now I didn’t buy the SLVR for iTunes, but I have to say that I am very pleasantly surprised at how much I’m enjoying the convenience. The software integration is excellent, and the sound quality is superb—I can say with confidence it is easily superior to my nano in audio reproduction. There is a rather annoying 100 song cap, but for bus-commuting-tunage that limit doesn’t bother me one bit.

What’s disappointing about the phone is that, well, it’s a Motorola. Which means the OS is mostly crap. I’ll never understand why you can’t apply more than one phone number to one contact. This has always seemed a too device-centric or location-centric approach to storing contact information to me, as opposed to a more human-centered approach. Unlike my old Sony, with the SLVR I have 4 potential avenues to make contact with one person (home, office, mobile, fax, for instance) instead of one person with 4 ways to contact them. It’s a personal preference admittedly, but a fundamental one that I feel is important; have you ever seen an address book that doesn’t have more than one line for phone numbers?

Also a drag is the fact that the headphones connect via the USB port, not an additional standard headphone jack. Moto does supply an adapter to use your own headphones, but when doing so you have to remove the USB plug before you can answer an incoming call. When using the included headphones receiving a call with music playing is a seamless experience; I’m always entertained by watching my shadow resume dancing once my caller has hung up.

So why the SLVR in the end? I’d love to get a Sony W600 or W800 but I don’t like the look of either of them, and the W800 decent chunk of change. I don’t want a slew of features if it compromises the form factor, which eliminates a lot of other phones. (I don’t even feel the SLVR in my pocket.) I don’t care about cell-phone cameras, as I’m usually packing around my SLR. If the W810 gets announced before my 30 day money-back window is up I’d be very tempted to jump on that device, but I’m sure it’d be quite a bit more costly than the SLVR, and for my purposes I’m not sure it’d be worth it.

The Goodness

• Killer looks
• Great sound quality
• USB plug charges the phone; no proprietary charger
• Full Bluetooth functionality
• For short trips, iTunes playback usurps an extra device (iPod)

The Not So Goodness

• Motorola contact manager; SUCKR
• No headphone jack
• Unimpressive battery life
• iTunes 100 song cap
• USB 1.1